


though the truth may vary

by petrichor (findingkairos)



Series: gentle beating of mighty wings [5]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Outtakes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 22:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18214406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findingkairos/pseuds/petrichor
Summary: Even in life, there's a lot that goes on unseen. There's always more beneath the surface.(Seiryūouttakes. Spoilers for both the fandom and for the fic, including and past the latest chapter, abound.)





	1. I have seen the future, brother (it is murder)

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of stuff I haven't or couldn't cover in the main fic, and plenty of scenes that I've cut from _Seiryū_ entirely because it didn't flow well with the rest of the chapter. No idea if they'll be in chronological order, but I'll be sure to mention which chapter they're from.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bianchi remembers this about the first time: the daylight streaming through the window, the sudden quiet of I-Pin, the way the light had shone on ten-years-older-Lambo’s hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This first outtake is a scene that I cut from Chapter 21: _16\. thunder hearts and lightning souls_. Title from Leonard Cohen's song "The Future."

Bianchi remembers this about the first time: the daylight streaming through the window, the sudden quiet of I-Pin, the way the light had shone on ten-years-older-Lambo’s hair.

The rest of it had fallen away at the blood on Lambo’s clothing, the red streaks on his hands. He looks – and smells – charred, and there’s something else in the base note. It smells like cooked meat.

“Bianchi-nee-san,” the man says. He sounds choked. His eyes have gone wide. She hadn’t known who he was, back then, but emotional manipulation and reading the situation had come to Bianchi as easily as it does now.

She opens up her arms, and doesn’t stab the man in the back when he dives into them, holding onto her as if she is the only one standing between him and drowning.

Beyond, next to the window, Satomi’s face has shuttered. “Lambo,” she says, and the pieces fall into place, and Bianchi lets her grip tighten, more personal instead of the impersonal embrace she’d initially given him, and Lambo makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Lambo, what happened?”

The man – Lambo, and God in His place above, Bianchi can just imagine the little Bovino that she watches over growing into someone like this, all lanky limbs and wiry strength and breath-stuttering desperation – mumbles something under his breath. At Satomi’s unchanging expression, Bianchi starts rubbing Lambo’s back, whispers, “Use your outside voice, huh, where did all of it go? Don’t tell me you got quieter in the last ten years.”

Bianchi can feel him shuddering beneath her hand. She keeps rubbing his back. “I can’t tell you,” Lambo says eventually. “It’ll change the future. Rule number one of having the Ten Year Bazooka.”

“That doesn’t seem to matter to your ten years younger self,” Satomi continues. Emotion starts creeping back into her voice. She’s self-taught, Bianchi remembers; Satomi’s emotional distance is all what she’s learned over the years, instead of having it been drilled into her by blank-faced instructors sworn to her Famiglia. “You’re getting blood on the tatami. You used the Bazooka here because I-Pin teased you, and you got upset.”

“You need to take it away from him,” Lambo says. It sounds like he’s almost stopped crying into her shoulder. Anyone else and Bianchi would have done her best to keep them there, showing them that they can trust her with their moments of weakness, that they can trust her with their secrets. For Lambo, Bianchi lets him take as much time as he needs, and then she lets him go.

He wipes at his eyes with the back of the hand that’s not smeared in blood, and only gives a choked thank you when Bianchi hands him a handkerchief. _A lady is never without a handkerchief_ , she can hear her mother say. Bianchi doesn’t think that her mother had exactly this in mind when she’d drilled that into her head.

Satomi, though, is not as easy to put off. She puts her hands into her pockets instead of folding her arms across her chest, but Bianchi has known her for a while now. She wants to, but is consciously preventing herself from doing that. “Why?” Satomi asks, and the question is more curious than demanding.

Lambo still flinches. From the implications, Bianchi thinks, and not the question nor its tone of delivery nor the person speaking it. There’s a wealth of difference between each of those cases. “Because after this, it gets dangerous.” Bianchi can hear the subtext: more dangerous than a life filled with the Vongola Famiglia haunting his steps. “I meant what I said, Bianchi-nee-san. Tell Tsuna-nii to be careful. The Varia might like him, but not everybody does. Charisma only gets you so far with legitimately crazy people. Keep an eye out for trouble. If you can cut it off at the head here–”

He stops himself, visibly biting down the rest of the words. But even still, there’s a lot to unpack here, first of which is the fact that apparently, the assassination squad of the most powerful Famiglia in Italy’s underworld will come to like _Sawada Tsunayoshi_. On the heels come the realization that the little boy will be winning over other allies to his side.

All too soon, ten minutes is up. Ten years later Lambo leaves before Satomi can grill any more information out of him, and neither can she demand that their current Lambo shoot himself again in order to send himself back – as soon as the boy condenses in the pink smoke, he launches himself at Bianchi again. This time there’s no blood, but still Bianchi needs to remind herself that it’s alright to be emotionally involved with this one. There’s no need to ready poisons behind her back, nor be on guard against wandering hands.

“Lambo-san hates the future,” the boy cries out. He’s weeping openly now, and the sobs are much more ugly coming from this ten-years-younger self. Bianchi meets Satomi’s eyes over the afro head for the second time. “Lambo-san hates the bazooka, and he _hates the future._ Never let me go back there again, Onee-chan.”

It’s the reference to himself using the first person that speaks volumes, more than the sudden hatred of Lambo’s favorite method of situational escape.

* * *

Bianchi and Satomi tell Keiko and the rest. Of course they do. In the face of such sudden and heart-felt warnings, there’s little else they can do.

* * *

Satomi is like Reborn because she weighs her options before she commits. The both of them are the first to strike, never the second. They both have pasts that they do not speak of, and family that never comes up in conversation.

Lal and Eri both value information – their own, and the control of that of others. They put more meaning in gestures than flowery language. They are both head-over-heels in love with someone who is head-over-heels in love with them, yet are ignorant to that very fact.

(Lal, at least, knows on some peripheral level that there is more to Colonello’s regard for her than simple respect and shallow love, but she actively deceives herself into thinking there is nothing more than that. As far as Bianchi can tell, Eri doesn’t realize how much Satomi looks to her, how much she pays attention.)

But there is crossover; Satomi code-switches as easily as breathing. Lal is a spymaster. Eri holds territory through the virtue of her name and is a known factor in this section of the Japanese islands. Reborn is the same, though in Italy.

And yet all of them will be emotionally compromised. Bianchi knows, because the second time that she sees ten-years-later Lambo who has blood on his hands and smells like soot and burning bodies, she nearly had been.

It’d taken all of her years of training to distance herself from the situation and think logically. Satomi and Eri have known the residents of Namimori for years by virtue of having grown up here; Lal and Reborn are older, yes, but they too are now entangled in the heart of the town. They will react first, shoot second, and think last.

And in order to prevent the future that Lambo Bovino had outlined, Bianchi will need to think first, act last. She will need the aid of people who can do the same. In that way, at least, Colonello of _I Prescelti Sette_ is an obvious choice.

She’s not yet spoken with him privately, about the situation or about their Skies. It’s the perfect excuse.

* * *

“Why did you bring me back?” Lambo asks. His voice is tight. His hands are clenched. He’s cleaned up since – they must be catching their breath in-between raids and fights – but he looks as though he’d be happier in sweats and a hoodie rather than the Armani suit they’ve stuffed him into.

 _Wear it like you own it¸_ Bianchi wants to tell him. Looking like the rest of the underbelly is its own kind of protection. But there’s ten minutes on the clock, and the seconds hand is continually counting down, and so she spreads her hands and catches Colonello’s eye and tells Lambo Bovino, the boy she’s helped raise, “Because I need you to tell us how to fix it.”

Credit to him – Lambo does not need her to elaborate on what _it_ is. He merely presses his lips together. His gaze flicks across the room – there is only one proper exit here, and the door is behind Bianchi. Colonello on her shoulder will be another boundary. But she can tell, in the same way that she knows Lambo has not slept well, that he wants to tell her. He wants to tell _someone_.

“Having knowledge of the future is a terrible burden,” Bianchi says into the quiet. “And I’m sorry you’re the one who’s been roped into it. I’m sorry I’ll be making you recount it a second time. But what use is knowledge of the future if you won’t use it? Tell me what’s gone wrong, Lambo.”

The unspoken implication is that she and Colonello will work out for themselves what events have occurred in order to arrive at the end. But Lambo is a man, now. There has been ten years where she – Bianchi, of this present – have not seen him grow. “The future is self-fulfilling,” he tells them. “By virtue of knowing what it is, events will transpire to keep it the same.”

“That’s only to keep a paradox from happening, kora,” Colonello interjects. He’s retreated behind that emotional wall all soldiers and black ops agents tend to have, but his tone is not unkind. It’s a fine line to walk. Bianchi wonders who else would be capable of it, before she puts the thought aside. “If we’re living in a multi-verse, though, there’s always the chance to make it different. You never know until you try.”

Bianchi picks up the rest of the thought. “And even if it is self-fulfilling, what’s the worst that can happen? The future will repeat itself. It will be no worse than if you had not told us.”

Lambo, for all that he is older now, is still the one she’d put on her hip and allowed to call _Onee-chan_ : big sister. He ducks his head, gaze to the ground. She doesn’t need to see his face to know that he’s thinking hard.

A minute passes by. Bianchi can feel Colonello tensing on her shoulder; the clock on the back wall, behind Lambo, continues its forward march. Then Lambo inhales deeply, his shoulders rising with the motion, and when he looks to them again his eyes are clear.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” he says. “And I’ll tell you how I’d fix it.”


	2. we’re looking back in hopes of running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short moment during the events of Chapter 26: [21\. silent watchers on cat feet searching](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2555606/chapters/45751441).
> 
> (The tragedy of hindsight, of course, is that Lal dies before Colonello does.)

  
This – the thing between a Sky, a Lightning, two Mists, two Rains, two _Clouds_ , a Storm, and a Sun – is a network, and Coyote Nougat calls them out on it, but he’s the one standing on the outside looking in. It’s the most tangled mess that he’s ever seen, he says, and even though it’s been left unspoken in what the man surely thinks is a moment of civility Lal can fill in the rest: he wants to demand that they all straighten it out. A Sky only needs their Guardians, goes the Italian wisdom; the rest are an invitation for drama.  
  
Healthy relationships don’t prioritize people over people, Lal tells him, and if her voice is clipped then she blames it on the company; no one is more important than another, and if the only way to reflect that in Flame is by taking on an organizational schema that will cause men to grasp at their pearls and gasp like nonnas, then so it will be.  
  
There are more important things than soothing the egos of sixty-year-old men, after all, like Iemitsu being put out to pasture for good. He is no longer relevant, and Lal can imagine how much that must burn, what the look on his face must be like, how his lips will twist for the split second it takes for him to regain control over himself, how his eyes will light up with fire and Flame and how he will snarl his excuses until those around him tire of hearing it.  
  
But it will be of no use, for his punishment will be as permanent as it is appropriate. The greatest insult, after all, that you can deal to a man like him - a man who thinks that he is relevant; a man who thinks that he is important - is to ignore him.  
  
A thought occurs to her. She has prepared for how they will deliver the news to the rest of the Italian underworld, in controlled rumors and whispers and gossipmongers, but she has not yet prepared the stratagem for information dissemination amongst their allies. The most important ones, the Varia and the Cavallone, already know by virtue of having been on site when Iemitsu had been revealed to be so utterly incompetent, but the rest?  
  
“How are you going to explain this to Fon?” Lal asks the group, and they pause.  
  
Colonello winces and says, “How about we just. Not.”  
  
“He keeps complaining about being kept out of the loop.”  
  
“If he wants to be kept in the loop then he should be on this side of the world,” Reborn says without looking up from his work, “and not Asia. Even Skull keeps himself better informed than him.”  
  
It is a pity, Lal thinks, that Reborn had erased his memory. He and Skull had gotten along quite well before they’d all been lured to the top of a mountain and sacrificed as part of a human ritual in an attempt to keep the balance of the universe from collapsing, but that had been then and this is now. The only time Reborn shows any positive emotion about their Cloud is when the man isn’t present, and then only in terms that demonstrate that emotion in a roundabout fashion.  
  
_Men._ They are all so afraid to say things out loud, and to do things in a straightforward manner. Honestly, one of them is going to be holding back tears and tearing themselves to pieces when someone dies without them having understood, in a clear manner, how much they mean to Colonello or Reborn, and it is going to be _nasty_. For her part, Lal can’t wait to knock some sense into these dumb bastards with Mammon for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the chapter of Seiryū proper, Reborn goes through the order in which the Arcobaleno went missing/died after they passed on their Pacifiers to the next generation.
> 
> Canonically, Trident Shamal "erased" Reborn's "old self" after the latter had accepted that he was going to be stuck in an Arcobaleno body.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have anything you'd like to see, whether if that's a scene from _Seiryū_ re-written from another character's perspective, or events mentioned in passing by the fic or by characters that I didn't cover, feel free to mention them in the comments!
> 
> (By "base note," Bianchi refers to the [notes in perfumery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_\(perfumery\)).)


End file.
